Not like a prisoner, with no ropes about his wrists, but like an honoured comrade they behaved towards him, riding ahead and behind him and not speaking amongst themselves lest they disturb his thoughts. There was no need for such courtesy. Perkin had few thoughts. Only he looked about him with something of the wonder of a child at the astonishing loveliness of living things, thinking that now might be the last time when he could see green leaves or hear birds sing without prison-bars between them. This was his farewell to life which no longer would have any unity with him, and from which he parted with regret, yet without anger, as a very old man might welcome death and, at the same time, be sorry to leave the things he loved behind him.
Thus back to Sheen Perkin jogged, back to the palace which was to him now a prison; and he hoped that he might never see Katherine Gordon again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A GHOST TAKES FLESH
AS THE prior had assured him, Perkin found that he was not yet to die; and he was almost sorry for it. Better death and the judgment of God than living death at the condemnation of man. They locked him into one of the towers of the Tower of London and gave him sufficient food and watered wine to keep alive; and that was all. Save for the visits of his jailers, he was cut off from life within stone walls. Day or night, he scarcely knew which it might be: day or night, it-did not matter. Let it rain or snow or howl a tempest, it could not trouble him in his cold chamber … Here he found never a star of hope to lead his thoughts to a dream of escape. Why should he seek to escape when there was nowhere for him to go and his wife was glad to be quit of his glum presence? Of her doings, he knew nothing, being told nothing, nothing at all; and even the rats and mice who came, poor wretches, to seek crumbs, he watched disinterestedly and did not chase away. Were they not also God’s creatures and had they not a right to eat?
Thin and haggard he grew and he would not shave. There was no mirror in which he could look; and what did his appearance matter when he had no woman to please with a smooth chin and perfumed body? Nothing mattered now, nothing at all. He had failed in life, not only because he was not king but because he had not mastered Katherine and won her love. Her withdrawal was symbolic of the world, and he could hot blame her for it. Men and women had been ready enough to accept him, to lout to him, to give him honours, money, adulation, even to marry him, so long as he was free and there was the possibility of his winning a throne. But quickly had they turned away once that throne was beyond his grasp. Nay, he could not quarrel 'with Katherine’s choice. Never, until towards the end, had she pretended love. Even though she might have been dishonest in that marriage, there had been honesty in her silence and in her refusal to counterfeit a love she could not feel. As his wife, without complaint had she submitted to his embraces, that being her conjugal duty, as she would have submitted to any man her coz the king might have chosen for her.
No. Try though he did, he could not hate the woman. He could hate nobody, not even Tydder who at first had treated him with magnificence that he might deceive the world and later not be harshly blamed when he took revenge, as he had taken it now. They had plotted it together, he and Katherine. That night they had left the garden gate unlocked until he had passed through, and then had locked it after him that he might not return. He could not blame them, for what was poor Perkin Warbeck to them but someone who must be got rid of quickly, and legally. The only one to blame was himself for his gullibility. Yet even now he could not know for certain … was he plain Perkin Warbeck or was he Prince Richard of England?
From Sheen had he been taken to London in a cart, the riding of a gentleman in a cart being an insult to amuse King Henry. The rogue had thought of everything, even to that small detail. Not honouring him with a trial and death by the lordly axe, he had pushed him away as though he were any commoner, a drunkard or a cozening tradesman, in the stocks in front of Westminster Hall. All day had he sat there, trying not to hear the ribald comments and to ignore the garbage thrown at him. Some of the watchers, God's blessing on them, had been brave enough to show compassion, cleaning away the filth and bringing him wine and food; but most of those who came had come to jeer, urging the boys to brutality against a man with his legs imprisoned in wood. Fortunately, it had rained that day, and that had kept many people indoors. Unhooded and uncapped, the water running down his face and greasy hair, he had sat in a puddle and watched the hateful faces of men and women gloating on him in his misery.
The following day, from Westminster with its clerks and lawyers, its priests and monks, and its courtiers and servants from the palace, they had carried him in that shameful cart to Cheapside. where a scaffold had been built that he might sit on it in the stocks above people’s heads, seen by all while he read the confession that he had been commanded to read. The words had meant nothing. Sounds to be made; that was all. Scarcely had he troubled to listen to his own voice denouncing himself again as an impostor. Intent only on maintaining his manly dignity, afraid only of tears or cowardly snivelling, he had not troubled really to understand the words. That wide street of wealthy merchant-houses running from St. Paul's to the Great Conduit was thronged that warm day in June, 1498. In the windows of the great merchant-houses, to his left, the tall carved and painted and gilded goldsmiths’ shops, men, women and children had stood or sat to watch the spectacle.
Those people within the city-walls did not revile him. More or less in silence, they had listened while with unhesitating voice he had denounced himself and his doings. Then had he realized how staunchly Yorkist was the city, the merchants uneasy under the cruel tax-gathering of Dudley and Empson bleaching their gold and silver treasure. Had his army been able to struggle as far east as this, he might now have been King of England and not a captive. But even this sad thought could no longer seriously distress him. He had fought against the stars and must suffer for their hostility.
This acceptance of fate under heaven’s malice kept him from madness in the Tower through lonely days and nights. When his jailers spoke to him, he answered courteously, scarcely noticing their presence until one morning when he looked up at the man setting down the loaf of stale bread and wooden platter of stockfish on the table, and for the moment believed that he was haunted. So many were the ghosts he seemed to see in this gloomy chamber that at first he thought little of the likeness, believing the man a conjuration of his own imagination. He shook his head and blinked, but the man did not vanish. Yet he could not be flesh and blood, impossible! because he had the lineaments of his one-time squire, Thomas Astwood.
“Yea, your grace,” sighed the man. “It is I, Tom Astwood.”
“You … you my jailer? what are you doing here?”
With a contemptuous shrug, Astwood smiled. “What else was I to do?” he asked. “None would trust me, fearing the king's displeasure, although I had been pardoned with the others, until Master Cleymound, one of the turnkeys here — head-turnkey of this tower — met me in a tavern and offered me work. Never did I think that I should stand guardian over you, my lord; but so does it go at times, all arsey-turvey, the devil against God and the monks against em both. I will ask Master Cleymound to send me elsewhere.”
“Nay,” said Perkin, “it is good to see a friend’s face again.” His voice faltered and, with sudden suspicion, he stared up at the man. “If he be a friend, of course,” he added.
“I cannot blame you, my lord, that you doubt me,” growled Astwood; “there are times that I doubt myself when I see a red rose on my arm. Me that was born in York and served at Middleham under the good King Dickon and saw his prince carried to that tomb in Sheriff Hutton. I could weep then because a brave boy died; I cannot weep now for myself. I should not have served here. It would have been better to starve.”
Tears were in Perkin’s eyes — too easily he wept these days — as he stretched out his hand. “Why should I doubt you?” he whispered, “and what have I to fear but death who would come as a friend? If you have been sent to kill, gladly I w
elcome you. Give me your hand, fellow …”
“Nay, nay,” squeaked Astwood, skipping back. “How could you think that I could harm you, sire? Mother Mary! my blood is Yorkist and I have lived too long without my sun in splendour. Harm you? Marry! rather would I hang myself, my lord, if hanging would do you good. Command me sire. Ask what you wish, and I will do it, if I can. And if I can’t, I’ll try.”
“Friend,” smiled Perkin, “there is only one thing I would ask of you; and that I could ask only at the peril of both our souls … Have you never wished to die, my friend?”
“When I was younger,” said Astwood, “and therefore a fool, I often wished to die because some giggling wench preferred another to me. Peace rest with those wenches, they were wiser than I to laugh at me. There have been other times, ah, many times … so many times, with deaths of friends and England’s kings, and the bloody ground at Bosworth. Then at Taunton did I wish to die when you rode off in the night and left us leaderless.”
“You and your friends should be grateful for that treachery,” growled Perkin, shuffling on the bed. “Were you not pardoned?”
“Yea, and better had it been if I were dead like Ashley and the others.” With sudden passion, he shouted and waved his fist. “What is life to a fowl without its feathers?” he shouted. “What is a man who has no honour, no love; no hope, no freedom, naught hut hate? For so am I, and would to God that someone would slit my weazand!”
“Amen,” said Perkin, and began to weep.
He wept, not so much for himself as for this man, this Thomas Astwood, once his squire, who had followed the hobgoblin of another man’s dreams to the death of his own contentment. Master and servant, they were both the victims, not of King Henry, but of ambition and the hope of making a happier England. Now, by chance — could it truly be by chance? — they had been brought together in this dank old fortress and palace where the river-mists curled around them, like two ghosts haunting a world that had forgotten them. Had Astwood reviled him, Perkin would have accepted the insults as being his due; but Astwood did not revile him. He stood with. damp eyes staring down at the greasy head resting on the filthy pillow.
“You must not give up hope, my lord,” he whispered.
“I have no hope, and I am hot your lord,” said Perkin testily. “I am Perkin Warbeck. Did you not hear the tidings? I have proclaimed the fact myself, often; ergo, it must be true. I am no prince, I am not Richard of England, God be thanked. I am poor silly Perkin Warbeck, an adventurer who stole the King of Scotland’s sibling and who conspired to fight against England’s anointed king, Harry the Seventh.”
“Call yourself what you like, my lord,” smirked Astwood, “I know you for what you are better than you do yourself, it seems; and how can a man tell who he is when he never sees his own arrival in the world? He must go by what he’s told and then hope for the best. No matter what you might say, I know you for King Richard. You speak our English tongue as though bred to it, for bred to it you were; and you have your dad’s likeness as though he were looking in a mirror. Well do I remember him. A big man, a laughing man, but sadly lecherous, alack! yet who could blame him? Even I, had God blessed me with such a body and such a smile to make the ladies’ mouths water, even I might not now be so chaste as I am forced to be. Talk as you will, prate to the birds, my lord, they’ll believe you sooner than I. And Tydder knows it, too. That’s why he’s locked you here, as he locked you years ago and murdered your poor brother …”
“Hush,” cried Perkin; “if you love your neck, you fool, hush!”
“There is none here to listen,” said Astwood, “and if there were, I’d not care, for they can but hang me once. With you it is different, or it should be. You are young and England awaits your return with trumpets and hozannas. I know, my lord. I mope abroad amongst the people, I eat in their homes when they’ll have me, I drink in taverns with them and converse with them between times at the stews, and I know, cut my throat if I’m a liar, that there’s scarce a man, woman or dog in this city who does not curse that day at Bosworth.”
“I have heard all that before,” groaned Perkin.
“Ay, of course, for it’s the truth. This Dudley sweats them hard. He knows how to hurt for he nibbles at their money-bags. And he makes em all, mayor and aldermen, bow and crouch before him. They’re driven so near to treason, my lord, that you can hear em muttering from one end of Chepe to the other and there’s near rioting at the Guildhall. The law’s kicked out of the window. If men go to learned fellows, serjeants and such, they are told that the best counsel they can give is to agree to anything Dudley asks, for they durst not speak in their causes. There are even clerks howling. You can hear em at Paul’s cross, preaching aloud about Herod and the plagues of God. And when they speak of God, they don’t mean Tydder.”
“This is naught to do with me, I tell you.”
“All the country’s hopes rest on you, sire; yet you talk of dying! Why, that is treason for a king to betray his people. Already you have found a friend even in the Tower, and I have many friends. But all of London is your friend, waiting for the call to tear down Dudley’s house by London Stone and to get at Empson, too, his gossip, who lives beside him on the corner of Cannon Street and Walbrook. And you must not forget there is your poor cousin of Warwick who lodges in the very chamber above you. Why! even he, weak-witted though he is, does not despair.”
“Alas, poor Warwick! is he still alive?”
“Well might you cry Alack!” sighed Astwood. “Since his uncle, King Richard, died, he’s been locked in here like a beast. He was at Sheriff Hutton, as you doubtless know, when his uncle was murdered at Bosworth; and that was the last bit of freedom he was ever to breathe. Tydder had him seized and locked him up in here. Now the poor young man’s half crazy and has forgotten how to laugh and in what guise a woman’s made. And what’s his crime? Marry, crime enough! he is a traitor and a wretch because, forsooth, he is the dead king’s nephew, son of the Duke of Clarence. You two, with King Edward’s sister’s son, Edmund de la Pole, are the last leaves of the tree of York. All the others have died or have been murdered; and once you three are gone, Tydder and his progeny will be safe till doomsday on our throne of England.”
“Tempter,” groaned Perkin. “I tell you, I have heard all this before, many times before. In palaces as well as prisons. Then was I drunk on the dream; but now I am awake again and I am sick. Would I had never heard the tale of Prince Richard which has brought me so low!”
Muttering angrily, Astwood strode to the door; and there he paused. “My lord,” he hissed, “this Tower of London is a strong fortress, by Gog and Magog, but others ere now have slipped out over its walls; and you have many friends, almost all England on your side …”
Perkin shut his eyes and hung his head. A trap: no question of it. Did the king think him such a simpleton that he would listen a second time to his own undoing? To go through the miseries again of capture and public penance would be, he feared, beyond his strength. He wanted nothing now from life except to be left alone …
Alone he was most of the days and nights, listening to sounds from the river, the calling of sailors, the slap of sails on yards, and men singing hymns or bawdy ballads while hauling on the ropes; listening to the guard on the battlements singing for company or chatting with some friend, cursing their officers and laughing about their wenches or what they did last night in tavern or brothel; listening to music and singing and even laughter from the nearby palace, listening in daytime to birds singing and the carking of crows, and at night, to the scrape of footsteps on stone floors. Forgotten it seemed he was, something forgotten, something that had been used, then thrown away to die once its usefulness was over. Why should he listen to this accursed tempter, Astwood, who still believed that Tydder might be overthrown?
“The city’s ready like dry hay for a torch,” whispered the jailer. “From high to low, from mayor to journeyman, merchant to thief and whore, there
’s naught but a rumble of curses on Tydder’s tyranny and what they’d like to do to Dudley and Empson if only somebody’d give em the knife to stick em with. London’s the key to England. Once this city’s in your pouch, you’ve only to whistle and the whole nation’s yours.”
Perkin would not listen to his beguiling. He groaned and rolled on the bed and turned his face towards the wall, for whenever he entered that cell — and now at all times he found some excuse to enter — Astwood sought to poke him into action.
“If I were to give you the key to this place,” he asked, “would you not use it, my lord? Your friends are more numerous and stronger than you know. I could have all the soldiers with us, too, if you’d but rouse yourself, my lord, and remember how you used to be. Mother of God, if you’ll not take care for your own future, think of poor unhappy Warwick, think of your people enslaved under this Welsh dog who chews their money-boxes and gobble? their estates …”
Always Perkin pretended not to hear. Only now and then he gave a sigh or a groan as though he were in pain. This Astwood was like a demon at him night and day, a demon-dog forever snapping and snarling. And he could not trust the fellow. He would trust no one in future. Loyal had Astwood seemed in the past when he had been his page, but now he was Tydder’s man and one of his damned spies and jailers. Doubtless he’d sold his loyalty with his labour.
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